Don’t you know the best method for convert list to string Python? If yes, then this article will help you to explore the best methods on how to convert list to string Python.
While working on a program, we might need to convert the data type of data from one to another. This is a very frequently occurring problem, especially in python as the variables are assigned data types based on the data we put in.
The data type given by the Python Interpreter might not be suitable for our program usage. That’s why, you should know how to convert the data type of a variable.
While most other conversions are much simpler, the conversion of lists to strings seems a little challenging to beginners as there is no direct function to do it. But you don’t need to worry, because in this article, we are going to talk about 4 simple ways to perform list to string conversion in python.
But before we jump on that, let’s first know a little about what strings and lists are.
What is a Python List ?
A python list is an Iterable (meaning that we can store data in it and then traverse the list to access the data). List is a very frequently used iterable. It can contain values of multiple data types in the same list and can also store duplicate values.
They can even contain other lists and other Iterables inside a list. A list containing another list is called a Nested List.
Lists can be declared using ‘[]’.We can also perform certain operations like slicing and concentrating etc.
Example:
l1 = [1, 2, ‘a string’, 4.53]
print(l1)
Output:
What is a String ?
A string in a programming language is basically a continuous collection of characters. Now what are characters? Characters can be understood as symbols on the keyboard. Alphabets, numbers and special characters ( ., @, # etc.) are all considered characters and can be a part of a string.
In python, there is no separate data type for characters, so every character data or string data is stored as string. These are also immutable which means once created, their value cannot be modified.
There are many string modification methods like join(), concatenate() etc. but they don’t change the actual string, but they create a copy of the actual string and modify it according to the functions.
Example:
str = ‘this is a string’
print(str)
Output:
this is a string
How to Convert List to String Python?
Now we are going to discuss the ways to convert List to String Python.
Method 1 : Iterative Method
The idea here is to traverse all the list items one by one and concatenate them in an empty string. This method is the most naïve way to do this conversion, but it’s also very simple and straightforward.
Example:
def convertToString(lis):
s = ”
#traversing over the list and concatenating the elements into an empty string
for ele in lis:
s = s + ele
s = s + ‘ ‘ #this will add space between the list elements(optional)
return s
l1 = [‘this’, ‘is’, ‘a’, ‘string’]
s = convertToString(l1)
print(s)
Output:
this is a string
Method 2 : join() method
The join method, as the name suggests, joins the strings in a list with a given string between each element. This can be used to convert lists to string.
There is an exception though. The join method will throw an error if the list contains non-string elements. Therefore, proper exception handling must be done.
Example:
def convertToString(lis):
s = ‘ ‘.join(lis)
return s
l1 = [‘this’, ‘is’, ‘a’, ‘string’]
s = convertToString(l1)
print(s)
Output:
this is a string
Method 3 : Using List Comprehension
The join() function seems to be the best choice for converting lists to string so far. It is simple and easy to use. But as we discussed earlier, the join() throws an error when it encounters a non-string element. To overcome this problem, we can use list comprehension.
In this method, rather than using the join() function directly, we first iterate over the list elements and typecast them into strings (typecasting means to convert the data type of a variable) and create a new list with those elements, which is then passed on to the join() function.
This ensures that every list element, whether string or not, first gets converted to string. This removes the possibility of type exception error from the usage of join() function.
Example:
def convertToString(lis):
  s = ' '.join([str(ele) for ele in lis])
  return s
l1 = ['this', 'is', 'a', 'string', 'with', 'integers :', 1, 2, 3]
s = convertToString(l1)
print(s)
Output:
this is a string with integers : 1 2 3
Method 4 : map() Function
The map() function in python takes a list ( or any other iterable) and functions similar to the join function. Therefore it can also be used to convert a list into a string.
Example:
def convertToString(lis):
  #syntax for map : map(data_type, iterable)
  s = ' '.join(map(str, lis))
  return s
l1 = ['this', 'is', 'a', 'string']
s = convertToString(l1)
print(s)
Output:
this is a string
Conclusion
It is all about convert list to string. Lists and Strings are both very frequently used data structures in python. Therefore, a programmer should be familiar with the working of these data structures, as well as the inbuilt methods related to them.
In this article, we discussed the various ways in which we can convert a list to a string. There are other methods also, but we have discussed the most simple and easy solutions to help you on your programming journey, rather than making you worry more. Happy Programming! If you find anything missing from our article for how to convert list to string Python then comment down below.